Interviews

Neverwinter Nights 2

On Wednesday, Atari Interactive issued a press release announcing that the sequel to BioWare's Neverwinter Nights is in development. The original Neverwinter Nights has sold over 2 million copies worldwide, making the announcement of a sequel not much of a suprise. What was surprising, though, was the revelation that BioWare would not be developing the sequel themselves, but had instead farmed it out to Obsidian Entertainment. Obsidian, a development house founded by Feargus Urquhart and several other refugees from Black Isle, are responsible several classic RPGs including Fallout 2, the Icewind Dale series and Planescape: Torment. This is the second project Obsidian is working on with BioWare, the company recently announced they were also working on the sequel to Knights of the Old Republic.

IGN.com's Tal Blevins was lucky enough to see the game and sit down with Feargus Urquhart himself and press him for more information on what may be the RPG event of 2006. You can check out Tal's preview of Neverwinter Nights 2 on
IGN and more information from BioWare on Neverwinter Vault.

GameSpy: Just to start out, what are you looking to do with the sequel?

Urquhart:Neverwinter Nights was a great game, and it provides an amazing foundation for us. We are really going to focus on putting in a strong, epic single-player story that is supported with stunning graphics that really put people in the Forgotten Realms. Plus, we plan to give the module-building community support for everything new we add to the game and hopefully refine the module-building process for them, so they can make even better things.

GameSpy: Will the game start off at first level, and will there be a level cap?

Urquhart: Players start out at first level, and we are playing around with a number of possibly crazy ideas when it comes to how they pick their class and alignment. We haven't made any specific decisions yet, but we really want to have that first part of the game be interesting. As for a level cap, there will be one for the single-player game, but that is mostly so that we can spend as much time as possible on all the spells and special character abilities for every class up to level 20 and make them the best they can be.

GameSpy: Where are you drawing inspiration from? Are you looking to any classics?

Urquhart: We've been talking a lot lately about older games and how games have evolved since then. We have particularly been looking at some of the Ultimas -- how they really made the world almost a character in the game. When you played games like Ultima IV, you got to really know the world and you had things you wanted to do in it that weren't just making your next level. We'd really like to return to a bit of that in Neverwinter 2.

GameSpy: How is the work broken up between Obsidian and Bioware?

Urquhart: Much like how we've worked together on Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic 2: The Sith Lords, Bioware has provided the latest version of its technology, in this case the Aurora engine which was used to create Neverwinter Nights, and assistance in using it. From there, we are going to be doing all of the design, art, and engine improvements, while Bioware is going to be looking over our milestones and offering insights.

GameSpy: How many people are working on the game now?

Urquhart: Right now we have 10 people working on the game, including Darren Monahan, who was a producer on the Icewind Dale and Dark Alliance series, and Marc Holmes, who was the art director on the original Neverwinter Nights.